The introduction of the Internet to the general public and the ensuing explosion of interest and demand for access to the Internet through telephone service provider networks has placed considerable strain on existing telecommunications infrastructure. Telephone service provider networks are now being overwhelmed by the explosion of data traffic over an infrastructure that was not intended for and is not capable of supporting the exponential increase in demand currently being experienced. This exponential increase in demand is particularly responsible for the exhaustion of resources at the access tandem level of the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
Concurrently with the explosion and demand for telephone services, most regulatory authorities have now opened the telephone service market to competition. Consequently, the incumbent service providers no longer enjoy a monopoly which makes massive capital investment in infrastructure attractive. There has therefore been a notable interest in new methods for increasing call handling capacity and reducing overhead and operating costs. Voice and voice grade data services over ATM networks have been proposed by several equipment providers as an alternative architecture for new infrastructure to augment the PSTN. The inherent advantages and disadvantages of ATM networks are well known. ATM offers flexible routing solutions which enable more efficient use of resources than the traditional hierarchical structure which has evolved in the PSTN. However, current ATM switches are incapable of call set up rates expected by the general public. Nonetheless, the diligent application of ingenuity has substantially overcome the disadvantages of the use of ATM to support voice and voice grade data services and ATM subnetworks are being constructed to off-load portions of the bearer traffic contributing to congestion in the PSTN.
A principal focus of the technical developments respecting the use of ATM networks to relieve congestion in the PSTN has been the use of ATM networks as a transport backbone for voice and voice grade data. While this focus has lead to the invention of many valuable tools useful in providing reliable service at competitive rates, the problem of inter-office trunking growth has only been partially addressed. There therefore exists a need for a method and apparatus capable of handling trunking growth economically, while reducing overhead maintenance costs in order to enable the provision of telephone services at competitive prices.